This was the second partnership deal signed this week between the ChatGPT developer and a high-profile Asian firm as it aims to expand its Stargate initiative.
ADVERTISEMENTUS artificial intelligence (AI) company OpenAI has announced it will partner up with South Korean tech giant Kakao to further expand in the region.
OpenAI CEO Sam unveiled the partnership at an event in Seoul with Kakao’s chief executive, Chung Shin-a. They will be working on a localised AI product.
This was the second partnership deal signed this week between the ChatGPT developer and a high-profile Asian firm, after the announcement of an alliance with Japan’s SoftBank.
The AI sector has been shaken by the recent announcement from Chinese newcomer DeepSeek that it has come up with very smart but low-cost AI that threatens to undercut incumbents like California-based OpenAI.
Altman also met with top officials of SK Hynix, a South Korea-based major supplier of high-bandwidth memory chips, and Samsung Electronics Chairman, Lee Jae-yong.
Kakao operates South Korea’s most popular messaging app KakaoTalk, which has expanded into areas such as e-commerce, payments, and gaming.
Altman is on a whirlwind tour of Asia, he is due to visit India on Wednesday.
Stargate is taking off in Asia
On Monday in Japan, SoftBank and OpenAI set up a 50-50 held company called SB OpenAI Japan.
SoftBank said it plans to spend around €3 billion a year to integrate its AI service Cristal across its companies, which include Arm, a semiconductor and software company, and PayPay, an electronic payment service.
Cristal could be used by companies for planning, marketing, emails and figuring out old source codes.
Altman talked about the just-announced «deep research,» which allows ChatGPT to carry out more complicated tasks, including preparing reports by browsing the web and finding thousands of sources far more quickly than a human worker.
SoftBank and OpenAI, along with Oracle, are part of the Stargate project supported by President Donald Trump, investing up to $500 billion (€484 billion) in AI infrastructure in the US.
Son said Stargate would expand into Japan and other nations.
Video editor • Rory Elliott Armstrong
